Door cover assemblies used to cover the controls on electronic devices have become popular in recent years. Increasingly seen on personal hand-held communication devices, such as a cellular or mobile radio telephone, a two-way radio, a pager, or any such combination, the door covers serve to protect electronic controls from accidental engagement, and also often serve to provide a smaller and more attractive electronic device package with increasing functions. Such a folding arrangement allows these devices to be more compact. In some of these devices, the door, cover, flap, or flip "flips" open to activate the device, and also functions as a mouthpiece or earpiece for the user.
Conventional designs of housings having closable flaps, flips, or doors usually employ a hinge mechanism to provide a self closing feature where the flip door is attached to the main housing of a hand-held communication device. Any required electrical connections between the two halves of the hinged portions would require separate wires or flexible circuit connections that must be somehow routed, with or without a connector, around the hinge mechanism.
An important factor for door cover assembly designs is the number of factory operations or steps required to complete the assembly. If wires are attached without a connector, then the wires would have to be terminated or soldered on the assembly line as an extra step. Reducing the number of assembly steps and minimizing the number of parts used are important contributions to reducing costs and increasing efficiencies of most manufacturing operations. Assemblies which achieve these objectives are in constant demand in the art. Therefore, a new door cover assembly is required which is simpler to assemble as a hinge which contains the connector for the attached wires.